The steps of painting and baking the paint on an automobile body and other manufactured items typically involves applying paint to the entire item, for example, by electrochemical deposition of paint onto the item. As a consequence, screw threads in metal parts of the item will be covered with paint. This coating of paint will clog the screw threads, making the later insertion of bolts or other threaded fasteners more difficult and time consuming than if there were no such paint coating.
The paint clogged threads increase the amount of torque necessary to secure together threaded parts, and prevent such threaded parts from being smoothly secured together. The paint clogged threads may also cause problems of cross-threading of a nut and bolt, leading to stripped threads and a consequent loss of the time and money needed to replace the threaded parts. Replacing a threaded part may also cause problems if the corrosion resistant coatings applied to products such as automobile bodies is compromised.
Two primary techniques have been used in the past to overcome these problems of paint clogging. One technique has been to insert a plastic sleeve into nuts and other threaded apertures. However, this is a tedious and time consuming procedure, as it requires mounting such sleeves into numerous threaded apertures in the manufactures item. Another technique is to apply a coating of polytetrafluoroethylene (PTFE) to the threads needing paint protection. However, this procedure has been found to be costly because of the cost of the PTFE material.